Vikings stadium bill advances in Senate, though now tied to controversial Racino funding

A Senate panel took one high-profile and controversial measure and tacked it onto another Wednesday, adding racino as a funding source for a new Vikings stadium.

Sen. Sean Nienow, R-Cambridge, offered the amendment to use a "proven, across-the-nation funding mechanism" instead of counting on tax revenue from electronic pulltabs, which he said was based on "fairies and foo-foo dust."

But whether racino - which will run into stiff opposition from anti-gambling advocates as well as the tribes that operate casinos across the state - throws a wrench into the whole stadium debate remains unknown.

The stadium bill got an additional hurdle when the Senate Finance Committee on April 25 sent it to the Taxes committee. The chair of the Taxes committee requested the bill earlier Wednesday after saying earlier in the week it didn't need to go before her panel.

The move to Taxes would slow the bill's progress through the Senate and is expected to be a challenging committee for stadium backers.

On Monday, in the Rules and Administration committee hearing, Senate Minority Leader Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, said he thought the stadium bill should go to Taxes, but Ortman said then it did not need to.

Advertisement

The stadium proposal got a strong vote of confidence when the Senate Jobs and Economic Growth Committee approved the bill without recommendation Tuesday, April 24, and forwarded it to the Finance Committee.

The voice vote appeared to be unanimous - committee Chairman Geoff Michel, R-Edina, said he heard no "no" votes.

After a different Senate committee approved it Friday, the bill appears to be on a roll, Michel said.

"I do think after a while it starts to take on a little bit of momentum and an air of inevitability," he said.

"I would say it's imminent," said Democratic Sen. John Marty of Roseville, a longtime critic of stadium subsidies. "I think they have the upper hand, and I think they're more likely than not to get their stadium within the week."

In the House, the stadium bill is already headed to the floor, after a committee vote Monday.

If the Senate Finance committee approves the bill Wednesday, it would be the sixth committee in the Legislature to do so.

So far, there have only been two committee votes in which individual members' votes were tallied. In one of those it lost, and in the other it won.

The other three have been voice votes.

Even if the bill gets through committees in both chambers, passing on the floor would be a new question.

House officials said the stadium bill would not be taken up on the floor Wednesday.

The House has 134 members. There is currently a vacancy, so it's 72 Republicans and 61 Democrats. The GOP holds 54 percent of the seats and the Democrats 46 percent. It would take 68 votes for a majority.

If they put up the votes proportionate to their representation in the body, the Republicans would put up 37 votes and the Democrats 31.

The Senate has 67 members, 37 Republicans and 30 Democrats. A proportionate stadium vote in the Senate would mean 19 Republican votes and 15 Democrats.

Senate GOP spokesman Steve Sviggum has said Republicans expect the parties to each put up 17 votes.

Sen. Julie Rosen, the Senate sponsor of the stadium bill, reacts after racino was added to the bill on an 11-3 vote in the Senate finance panel at the State Capitol on Wednesday, April 25, 2012. She says the addition would kill the bill.
(Pioneer Press: Ben Garvin)

Bakk has said it would be reasonable to expect Democrats to put up 12 votes, which is the number of Republicans who voted for the Twins stadium bill in 2006.

The full Senate did approve a Vikings stadium bill in 2006, but that stadium was removed in conference committee in an agreement that called for new facilities for the Twins and University of Minnesota football Gophers.

Team officials have said they were promised after 2006 that their stadium would be dealt with the following year, and they've used that to add pressure on the Legislature to act this session.

Now, as the new stadium measures go through the committee process in each chamber, they diverge more and more.

Stadium bill sponsor Sen.

Adrian Peterson, left, speaks with Sen. John Howe, R-Red Wing, outside the committee room at the State Capitol where Peterson appeared in support of the stadium billing working its way through committee on Wednesday, April 25, 2012.
(Pioneer Press: Ben Garvin)

Julie Rosen, R-Fairmont, acknowledged it will take some work to resolve the two.

"We'll take it to conference committee. We'll be working through the weekend, I'm sure," she said.

The Senate bill emerged from Tuesday's committee meeting with a loan-forgiveness deal for St. Paul's RiverCentre, which Rosen said would take down the entire bill if it isn't significantly reduced.

With $43 million earmarked for St. Paul, she said, "I have nothing to pay for debt service."

Rosen said she was committed to offering St. Paul something to equalize the disparity stemming from a provision that allows Minneapolis to repurpose convention center taxes to renovate the Target Center.

That provision was restored to the bill after it was removed Friday over concerns about unfair competition with Xcel Energy Center.

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman told committee members Tuesday that "St. Paul needs to be a part of this equation."

"I believe this is a fairness issue," said Sen. James Metzen, DFL-South St. Paul, who proposed the loan-forgiveness amendment.

He suggested that its adoption would help round up votes for the overall bill.

"This amendment, in my opinion, will help us get to the end zone," Metzen said.

But Sen. Ken Kelash, DFL-Minneapolis, said St. Paul has benefited from not having the downtown sales tax burden that Minneapolis has and suggested the competition goes both ways.

"Target Center was doing just fine if you hadn't built the Xcel Center," he told Coleman.

"One by one, we keep adding on other costs," Nelson said. "I think this is a very dangerous route that we're taking here."

Lillie's proposal would have required $27 million from the state. He withdrew the amendment.

Rosen's amended stadium bill also adjusts the revenue split between the state and charitable gaming groups.

The plan calls for the state to contribute $398 million to the $975 million project. That money would come from new tax revenue expected to be generated through authorization of electronic forms of the pull-tab and bingo games, now played on paper as fundraisers for charitable groups.

Estimates are the new gaming activity would generate $72 million in annual tax revenue for the state. Rosen's new proposal would give $13 million of that back to the charities as tax relief, leaving $59 million for the state.

That's a slightly better offer for the charities than the $10 million Gov. Mark Dayton offered several weeks ago but not as good as the 50-50 deal in the House.

Revenue Commissioner Myron Frans said the deal leaves the charities with $66 million in additional annual profits.

But the charitable groups have said they're more interested in tax reform and relief than in additional revenue per se.

King Wilson, executive director of Allied Charities of Minnesota, called Rosen's amendment "a definite step in the right direction." But he said it's not satisfactory yet.